The Dwelling

by Susie Moloney

  He hadn’t expected it to be.

  After all, he wrote this stuff. He smiled gamely and closed the bedroom door after himself.

  Under the hatch, he stared up into the dark mouth of the attic. He tried to work up a bit of adrenaline and found himself too drunk. He tried to find the drama inside—of course there was nothing up there, obviously he had simply not shut the attic hatch after working that day, but it was an opportunity nonetheless to be his reader for just a moment—but he was too drunk.

  The smell was definitely up there. It would be electrical. The smart thing to do was to go back downstairs and turn off the breaker that served the attic. Bad wiring. Old house. Very expensive. The odor of whatever was burning did not smell electrical: missing was that sharp, plastic smell of the coatings burning. This particular smell was somehow animal, like pork, overdone pork, burned too long on a barbecue; but it had a rubbery smell, like tires. It was biting, painful in his nose, especially so close. Synthetics did that. If it was the insulation, he was fucked.

  He climbed the ladder. If there was a fire, he might just throw himself on it.

  The drink in his hand presented a problem, but he climbed without addressing it. Two steps up he heard the hum of his computer, such an intimate and comfortable sound that he hardly noticed it at first. Not until he reached the top stair and the light from the screen, facing the hatch, met him.

  Facing the wrong way. Facing the hatch.

  The lid to the tiny portable was half closed (half-empty), directing the light toward the opposite wall. The screen inside, just visible, was white. Like a page. His word-processing program produced a blank white page to write on, just like the greats of old: Hemingway and his notebooks; Fitzgerald at the typewriter; Plath and her pages of baggage.

  All around the computer was black. It was the only light, casting a weak glow around the table it sat on, so that he could just see the edge, and the floor underneath it. Fruitlessly, he glanced around the attic at floor level. The light that filtered up from the floor below pooled around the opening in the floor, but not far. He would turn on the desk lamp. He could flash it around the room, like a club. See what there was to see.

  Richie took one more sip of his drink before resting it on the floor and pulling himself up. With a bit of a struggle, he stood into blackness. He strained into the dark. The room was silent. It stank up there, for sure, but the smell seemed suddenly old, a hangover, yesterday’s meat.

  He reached over and pulled up the lid on the computer.

  The screen was blank except for a few words in the middle, as though laid out. He squinted to read, but it was too small.

  Four lines. Like a poem.

  (little arms little legs)

  sweet pain does it hurt does it hurt

  is it exquisite taste it

  does it please you

  does it hurt you let it hurt let it eat you eat it up

  He stared and read it again, trying to make sense of the words all running together, and he lost himself in them, finally finding the drama. The back of his neck tightened. His mouth was dry and he tasted the old smell of burning(meat rubber and synthetics). And he looked up into the dark.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a flash of white. He spun that way, staring madly into the dark, one hand lightly on the edge of the lid to his computer.

  “Hey!”he called.

  Nothing answered back but the dark. He stared for a long time into it, waiting for something to show itself.

  Wondering.

  The wonder touched some basic, primal place inside him that it might not have reached in the harsh light of sobriety. In sobriety, he might have(eat it up) freaked out, slammed the hatch door, called it heebie-jeebies, left it alone. Calmed himself and maybe (until nightfall) laughed it off.

  In his drunken half-numb, half-open state, he allowed the wonder. The fear, prickly, felt good.

  “What is this?” he asked of the dark. He swallowed on a dry mouth. His skin woke up, sobering him slightly, but not enough. “What is this?” he repeated, very softly.

  Something like a shadow flickered to his right, gray and indefinite. Richie squinted, focusing with difficulty. The light from the computer glowed beside him.

  A man stepped closer, out of the dark, and stared back. Richie shrieked. Stood frozen, open-mouthed.

  The man smiled softly, sadly, kindly, and Richie saw him distinctly, his pale, watery eyes, white face topped with whiter hair, neck wrinkled and long, poking out of a white collar; the rest of him was dark. Long: he wore something long, like a cloak. The man was very tall and slender, like a tree, his tremendous age and height making him seem firmly rooted.

  The edges of the man wavered, features shivered. The nose, long and sleek, grew bulbous and mottled with red. The eyes darkened, became shot through with red veins. The great height that he had first seen shrank. The girth widened. His old man looked into Richie’s eyes with a kind of longing that Richie felt through the fog of drink.

  “Dad?” The old man smiled. He raised a hand in a practiced gesture, and one Richie remembered with complications. In the raised hand was a glass. Amber liquid sloshed. His father did not speak, but Richie heard it in his head:Salud. It was not raised to lips (as it would have been,Salud, to his brothers and his mother, his mother’s face a mask, smile plastered thinly, that would be early in the evening; as the night wore on, the toasts would be fewer and finally they would be gone and the old man would just sit at the table leaning closer and closer to his drink, silent except for the unintelligible mumbling and the clink of the glass on the table, the splash of bourbon or whiskey into the glass all of it repeated repeatedly his mother’s mask stiff and angry by bedtime and the reek of another burned dinner in the oven kept warm because his father didn’t like to eat at night when he was pouring a few). But the smile stayed there, on his lips, also a practiced motion. The old man’s facial expression changed only with the slackening of his muscles as the night wore on. The smile was one of acquiescence,I mean no harm. Don’t mean it a bit.

  The glass caught light from somewhere and sparkled. Richie stared into the face of his father, dead nearly fifteen years, victim of his own submission, not to his mother but the bottle, and felt longing for him. Thesalud of earliest evening, the Saturday mornings when he wasfeeling a little rough today little man and they would slip out, the four of them, for bacon and eggs and coffeehot and black please while his mother slept or fumed behind the closed door of the big bedroom.

  “Dad?” Richie whispered, afraid that his voice would frighten him off break some spell and he would be without him. It sounded like a sob.

  The figure wavered and Richie’s father was gone.

  In his place was the tall man. He smiled broadly, dragging it out over large yellow teeth, his lips stretching uncomfortably over them, their wrinkles smoothing out and appearing in his cheeks. The smile was broad and pleased. The Rajah.

  His lips did not move but, as with his dad, Richie heard him.

  Do you hurt?

  He looked down to the computer screen with just the corner of his eye. The words on the screen sat passively, like little soldiers, waiting.At your go.

  does it hurt you let it hurt let it eat you eat it up

  (eat it up)

  Richie looked back at the man. “No,” he said.

  The old man smiled. And faded into the black.

  Then the moaning began. Low, at first, high-pitched like animal wails, the howls of pain from something young. Richie strained to see the place where the man had been, but the sound was everywhere in the room; he swung his head around. Everywhere seemed to be movement.

  He backed up to the hatch, something flew by him, hands outstretched, flashing past in a split second. Under the low growls of pain and fear were soft sobs, hiccuping sobs. The noise rose to a cacophony and he pressed his hands over his ears. He stumbled backward, one foot hitting his glass and sending it falling down the hatch. He heard it break on the bare floor. He followed it, trip
ping first on the edge, catching himself on the ladder and then, in haste, missing the last step and toppling down to the floor of the hall, where it was bright and cool. He hit the floor right knee first and pain shot up through his leg and into his hip and he groaned, throwing his head back. He brought his knee up and cradled it.

  He rocked, briskly rubbing his injury. Broken glass sparkled in the hall light.Dad. Drunk even when he was dead. Drinking. His version of heaven. Richie’s knee ached and he wondered if it was bleeding. He looked up through the dark hole of the attic. His head throbbed with the beginnings of a headache. The hall smelled of bourbon. Like his dad.Salud.

  Silence fell down around him. The only sound audible was the hum from his computer, still on, and he listened to it.

  He sat that way for a minute, then stood up and hobbled, limping, to his bedroom. He pushed open the door and fell onto the bed, leaving all the lights on downstairs, the light on in the hall, the computer on upstairs, and the music on downstairs, although he didn’t remember it playing before. Not since Jen left.

  Let it play. Leave the lights. Let the neighbors think there’s a party going on.

  Salud.

  Just before sleep and alcohol claimed him for the night he thoughtthe DTs. Bad really bad Bramley.

  (do you hurt)

  Three

  Rare November sunshine streamed through the tall windows that Mia Tia was famous for, and glanced off the china and glasses. The sun was so bright, reflecting as it did off the fresh, thin layer of snow outside, that it made some places in the restaurant hard to look at. It was too bright, and Glenn Darnley could feel the beginnings of a headache. A tension headache. A bright patch of sun on the floor seemed to dull and fade the carpet, and she tried to make out the pattern. She didn’t feel dizzy exactly, but things were swimming around inside her. She dared not look at her plate.

  She took a sip of wine from her glass and it did not help, might, in fact, have made the nausea worse. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in an attempt to stave it off.

  “Glenn?”

  She was having lunch with Gavin and Helen, their treat, a fact that had not gone unremarked upon when Gavin saw what she’d ordered.For Chrissakes, Glenny, have a steak! It’s my treat! On the plate in front of her was a small, unadorned salad and a piece of grilled fish—no sauce. Between the two was a small pile of roast potatoes coated in some sort of Creole batter that Gavin had insisted was ambrosia and that shemust try. He’d piled a half-dozen on her plate and teased her about watching her figure. She had meant to counter with a remark upon his growing waistline, and would have, if she hadn’t believed deeply and sincerely that if she opened her mouth all that she had thus far eaten and drunk would come sailing up and onto his medium-rare steak and potato ambrosia.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Helen asked. Glenn opened her eyes to Helen’s soft brown ones, frowning in concern. “You’re just pale as the tablecloth,” she said.

  Glenn pressed a hand to her cheek and smiled wanly. “I’m fine. A little indigestion, I’m afraid.”

  “From what?” Gavin bellowed. “There’s nothing on your goddamn plate!”

  She shrugged gently. “I’m afraid I might have an ulcer,” she said. “I just can’t eat the things I used to. If you don’t mind—” Glenn pulled her purse into her lap from the floor and rummaged through it for her antacids. She put two into her mouth discreetly and chewed. “There. Better in a flash,” she said, without conviction. Lately, the antacids had not helped. She chewed the thick chalky tablets and kept her smile firm.

  Helen stared her down, kindly. “I’ve never heard of someone going pale from heartburn,” she said.

  Glenn swallowed the rest of the tablets and they left her mouth coated and dry. Awful things. She picked up her white wine and sipped.

  It occurred to her very suddenly that it was not going to stay down. She grabbed her napkin, muttered anexcuse me through it and moved very quickly to the ladies’ room.

  She flushed the toilet a second time and wiped her mouth again with the napkin from the table. It was fouled with vomit and saliva. She grimaced, folded it into itself and stepped out of the stall, mortified, unsure as to whether she had ever vomited in a public rest room before in the whole course of her life.Who says life stops at fifty?

  Helen was waiting for her. “Are you all right now?” she asked. She handed Glenn her purse, left at the table.

  Glenn nodded, taking it. She put it down beside the sink and turned the water on, letting it run cold.

  “I don’t suppose you’re pregnant?” Helen asked wryly, while Glenn rinsed her face and mouth with cold water from the tap. The rest room was empty except for the two of them. Her mouth tasted terrible; like tinned peas, or something equally distasteful.

  “I don’t think so. Unless I’ve been sleeping more deeply than usual.”

  Helen did not smile. “Has this been going on long?”

  It wasn’t the first time that Glenn had vomited after eating, but it was not information that she was about to share. Not even with Helen. Maybe with Howard, if he had been there. Thinking of him made her feel worse. “I’ve likely got some sort of bug,” she said.

  “Well, let me tell you what I’ve noticed,” Helen said. “You have lost about ten or more pounds since the fall. I saw you in your yellow dress at the broker’s luncheon and then in that same dress at Thanksgiving. It hung on you like a hanger at Thanksgiving.”

  “Isn’t that good?” she said, trying to sound light. She rinsed the napkin under warm water and then patted her face with it. She looked at herself in the mirror. She was pale.

  “You pop Tums like they’re breath mints. You never eat anymore. My god, Glenn! Even Gavin noticed. Are you sick or what?”

  The two women locked eyes. Glenn shook her head. “I’m sure I’m fine.”

  Helen pressed her lips together. Then she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue just a little way. She pressed her teeth into it.

  Glenn frowned. “What on earth are you doing?” she said.

  Helen did not smile. “I’m biting my tongue. Please go to the doctor.” And with that she left the room.

  Glenn opened her purse and took out her comb. She fixed her hair and reapplied makeup, which improved her color. Her stomach felt awful. There was an ache, almost omnipresent, but after vomiting it always felt hot, like a wound broken open and not healing well. There was a hardness there that she could feel only from the inside; she had tried on numerous evenings to feel something by pressing down on her abdomen—fingers searching, terrified and vainly, for a lump, a tumor, a place where the pain was worse than everywhere else.

  Rarely could she eat anything anymore of any significance. She kept her meals very small, these days, and very, very bland. She had tried buttermilk, her mother’s remedy for upset stomach, and for a while that had seemed to help. Certainly an ulcer was not out of the question: her mother and an aunt had both suffered in their lifetimes, and had given up eating their own famous pickled eggs due to it. Horrible combination: of all things to give up, pickled eggs seemed a choice preordained.

  She put lipstick on her mouth and patted the excess on a piece of tissue that she pulled from her purse. She looked much better. Except for the hollows around her eyes and the slackness in her cheeks.

  Twelve pounds, it had been. Maybe more by now. She hadn’t been on a scale in two weeks, but the weight seemed to be falling off with an alarming regularity.

  Very bad sign, weight loss. Diabetes. She’d had a cousin with diabetes, she thought. She had fuzzy memories of surreptitious blood tests in the home of a distant aunt, and the adults whispering concern.

  ’Course, diabetes didn’t make you throw up, did it? Glenn patted her hair, still fashionably short, and smoothed the front of her blouse over an unfamiliarly flat belly. The weight had come off so quickly she had yet to get used to it. She looked pretty good still. She supposed, eventually, she would look worse. She didn’t have a thin frame. She needed a lit
tle meat on her large bones. That was what made the weight loss seem so alarming to a tiny, delicate thing like Helen. It was the big bones jutting through the fine fabrics Glenn wore. She pushed open the door to the ladies’ room and felt suddenly as though the whole restaurant would be watching her. As though they had known.

  She’s sick, you know. Poor thing. Her husband died last year.But, of course, no one was watching, except Helen, who still had a slightly suspicious look on her face, the sort reserved for mothers. Gavin was chewing, and had another bite of steak on deck. He smiled happily at her, sauce on his outer lip. Her stomach flopped.

  No appetite, either. She would have to stop lunching with others.

  Four

  Richie woke to the phone ringing. He opened his eyes to sunshine, blazing through the uncurtained window, and flinched against it. His head thudded with a tremendous headache, a monstrous headache, a headache of epic proportions.In the corner, introducing Richie Bramley, the lightweight champion of medium-sized publishers everywhere! And in this corner! Ladies and gentlemen, the Headache! No contest whatsoever!

  The phone jangled sharply into his very bones. He willed it to stop ringing. Briefly some of the night came back to him—the argument with Jen. Remorse hit him worse than the headache. But it was not as long-lasting.

  He yanked himself out of bed, grimacing against the pounding in his headExcedrin Headache #568 the one where the guy kills himself and ran down the stairs grabbing the phone on the ring.

  Mouth full of snakes, he said, “Hello.”

  “Dad?” RJ seemed to scream it into the phone.